Profiles

Ludwig M. Lachmann

Ludwig Lachmann (1906–1990) was a German-born member of the Austrian School of economics. He studied at the London School of Economics in the 1930s, taught at the University of Wiwatersrand in South Africa, and wrote seminal material on Austrian capital theory.

Was George Stigler sympathetic to the Austrian school? Lachmann doesn’t think so because Stigler was a favorite student of Knight. Austrians should have dealt with Keynes, instead they quarreled with Knight. What policies do Austrians pursue? Those that favor the market.

Biographical remarks about Lachmann (1906-1990). Then, Lachmann describes Austrian economics as being subjectivism (individual human action), a certain attitude to time (the future is unknowable), and a distrust of macroeconomic entities (they exist, but Austrians look at macro as mechanistic).